Vermont family marks 15 years of dinner gatherings on 15th

Aug. 27, 2010

Mark prepares a dinner plate consisting of Kohlrabi salad with roasted beets and fresh corn in a Thai cilantro sauce, Northern Vietnamese pork and beef meatballs with a caramelized plum sauce, a side of cheese grits, and a jasmine rice square. / BEN SARLE, for the Free Press

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Jasmine Sticky Rice Squares with Cilantro Dipping Sauce

For jasmine rice:

3 cups raw jasmine rice 6 cups water Cook rice in water in a rice steamer or large pot until done. The rice will still be wet since you cooked it with extra water. Use a potato masher or back of a large spoon to mash the rice while it is hot just until it sticks together when you scoop it together. Press the rice into a 9-by-13 baking dish or lasagna pan. Cover with parchment or plastic wrap and place another pan on top with something heavy inside to weigh it down (large cans of vegetables work well). Chill for at least a couple of hours in the fridge and then cut into small cubes for dipping. Makes about 24 cubes.

In a blender, combine garlic, salt, pepper, cilantro, scallions, chili pepper, lemon juice and coconut milk and blend until smooth. Transfer sauce to a small saucepan and set over medium heat. Add peanut butter to pan and whisk as sauce warms up until smooth. Pour into serving dish and set aside to cool. When cool, taste and adjust salt and add more coconut milk as desired to thin or mellow the heat. Makes about 1 and one-half cups of sauce.

Free Press testing note: This sauce is delicious and very versatile. It goes beautifully with chicken, fish and pork and can also be thinned with more coconut milk and lemon juice to use as a salad dressing. Extra coconut milk can be frozen and thawed in the fridge for future use. It will separate but just shake it before using.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 9-by-13 baking dish. Cook grits in boiling, lightly salted water according to package directions until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in grated cheese and butter until melted. Then stir in eggs until thoroughly combined (the grits should be cool enough by the point not to cook the eggs). Season with pepper to taste. Pour and spread evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for about 60 minutes until golden and bubbling. Cool slightly before serving. Serves 18 generously.

In a small bowl or jar with tight-fitting lid, whisk or shake together vinegar, mustard, maple syrup, garlic and salt. Slowly whisk in oil if using a bowl, or add oil, close jar and vigorously shake dressing to emulsify. Add pepper, more salt and more maple syrup to taste. Makes about 1 cup dressing.

— Recipes tested by Melissa Pasanen

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HUNTINGTON — The fire alarm kept going off, but that didn’t seem to ruffle Mark Lubkowitz as he pulled together a few last-minute souffles for a recent Sunday evening dinner party.

It is a rare host who decides to add souffles to the menu just a few hours before welcoming 40 or so guests to a multi-course meal.

It is a rarer host still who cooks a full gourmet meal for dozens of people on the 15th of every month for 15 years, but that’s what Mark Lubkowitz has done, in partnership with his wife, Ginger, since the two were graduate students in Knoxville, Tennessee.

“We got married and wanted to create a family tradition and the fifteenth was when we got paid,” Mark Lubkowitz, 41, said as he pureed home-grown beet greens with half and half for the souffle base.

“Mark is the energy behind it,” added Ginger Lubkowitz, 40, smiling at her husband. “I’d have turned it into a potluck a long time ago.”

It is also partly the fault of the china, the couple confided.

Ginger’s mother, Patricia Gay, who happened to be visiting from New Orleans for the August dinner party, is a big believer in china and took the couple shopping for china when they were married.

“We didn’t want to have china and never use it,” Ginger said, before popping next door to put a huge roasting pan of cheese grits into a neighbor’s oven. “And we like to cook, so we decided to have dinner parties every month,” her husband concluded.

Cultivated following

The parties have evolved over the years, as the couple moved from Tennessee to Berkeley, Calif., where Mark did post-doctoral work in biology, and then to the Burlington area where they settled in 2001.

“When we started them, we didn’t know anyone with children,” Mark said. “The parties would start at 8 p.m. and end at 2 a.m.” Now their two sons, Jax, 8, and Zander, 3, are very much a part of the events along with many of their young friends, and the dinners tend to wind down at a more reasonable hour.

When they arrived in Vermont for Mark to take a position teaching in St. Michael’s College’s biology department, Ginger soon landed a job in development with the University of Vermont College of Medicine, but they knew almost no one in the state.

So they asked everyone they knew for names of friends or acquaintances in the Burlington area and invited them all to the inaugural Vermont dinner. It was a party of strangers, some of whom went on to become friends.

Mark generally plans the menu and executes it with Ginger’s help. “When we first started, we’d pick a nationality,” he explained, “but after eight years, we’d gone around the world so many times.”

“Berkeley was the pinnacle of cooking,” Mark said. “You can get any ingredient there. You want buddha fruit, it’s there. You want seven types of eggplant, they’re there. I would just wander in the grocery store and pick out interesting things and make a meal based on that.”

Since the Lubkowitzes grew up in the South, comfort food such as grits, pulled pork and other southern specialties are often featured, but the menu is incredibly diverse as evidenced by the laden table a few Sundays ago.

There was homemade smoked mozzarella with fresh garden tomatoes and basil, home-grown kohlrabi salad with roasted beets and fresh corn in a Thai cilantro dressing, sticky Jasmine rice squares with a coconut-cilantro dipping sauce, roasted Maple Wind chicken with a Thai peanut sauce and pork and beef meatballs flavored with galangal and lemongrass in a Spanish-style caramelized plum sauce. Then there were the cheese grits, the beet-green souffles with roasted beet sauce and homemade blueberry-ginger ice cream.

The couple sometimes serve their own home-brewed beer and even homemade wine, pressed from their backyard grapes. This has birthed a micro-winery they jokingly call, “Briefly Complex.”

The budgets have increased over the years, Mark noted: “Back in 1995, our budget was about $40 or $50. Then we moved to Berkeley and it went up to $100.”

The couple doesn’t have a specific budget any more, but they keep expenses in check by growing many of the ingredients in their large backyard garden, which also has thriving raspberry and blueberry patches and even fruit trees.

They also credit their good friends and frequent 15th dinner party attendees, Beth Whiting and Bruce Hennessey of Maple Wind Farm, for unofficial dinner party “sponsorship” by providing meat and eggs from their nearby farm.

“We wanted to give back to these guys,” Hennessey said. “It’s not like a potluck. They just give, give, give.”

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Standing appointment

One thing that has never changed is the date. The dinner party is always on the 15th, no matter what day of the week. That’s part of what makes it interesting, Mark explained. Depending on the day of the week, he said, he has more or less time to mastermind the menu. “The crowd changes, the vibe changes, the food changes,” he added.

“If we’re away on the 15th, it still happens,” said Mark, consulting with his wife about the places they’ve held dinners — at Ginger’s mother’s home in New Orleans, while camping in the Sierra mountains, on vacation with friends in Winter Park, Colo. The couple estimate they’ve missed only a handful of 15ths over the years for events like weddings and funerals.

Almost all have gone off without a hitch, but you give that many dinner parties and things are bound to go wrong every once in a while.

The biggest failure, Mark said, would have to be one January 15th when he had devoted days to making a gumbo with a 15-pound turkey from Maple Wind. “I spent two hours just making the perfect roux,” he recalled.

He carefully secured the five-gallon pot of gumbo into a snow bank the night before the party only to return home from another gathering just a few hours before the dinner to find that a dog had sniffed it out and eaten it.

“I fell back on the southern Monday night supper classic of red beans and rice with a big salad,” he said.

Instant community

The biggest event was 56 people who came to the final dinner party in Berkeley, but the average attendance varies from a dozen to a few dozen depending on weather, time of year and other random factors. Mark maintains an e-mail list but doesn’t really know how many local people are on it because it still includes friends from California and other places who just want to stay in the loop. “It’s like tenure,” said the St. Michael’s associate professor. “Once you’re invited, you’re always invited. Just show up.”

As guests started to arrive at the recent , the Lubkowitzes summed up why they keep throwing their dinner parties.

“Our dream is that every 15th of the month should be a national holiday,” Ginger explained, “when people take a break and relax and eat together.”

“We’d love to see the idea spread,” Mark said. “Everywhere that we live, when we leave, people keep it going and some friends take it with them where they go. There’ve been 15th of the month parties in Chattanooga, Baton Rouge, Chicago, Atlanta. Most only go like three times, but one in Oakland has happened 100 times.”

“Community does happen spontaneously, but you have to foster it,” Mark concluded. “Relationships take time.”

The Fecteaus of Huntington were just two of the many guests who echoed the thoughts of their hosts as the evening progressed with convivial conversation over food and drink.

“It’s all about community. In this fast-paced world, you have to make time,” Jim Fecteau said as he dug into a full plate. His wife, Jessica chimed in: “And the food is always so good.”